Karl Maria Demelhuber

Karl Maria Demelhuber (26 May 1896-18 March 1988) was a Waffen-SS and Heer Obergruppenfuehrer during World War II.

Biography
Karl Maria Demelhuber was born on 26 May 1896 in Freising, German Empire, and he served in the Imperial German Army during World War I. He joined the Freikorps after the war, serving alongside Oskar Dirlewanger and Ernst Rohm. In 1920, he resigned from the Reichswehr and became the 4,439th member of the Nazi Party on 20 February 1922. In 1935, he became the 252,392n member of the SS, and he became an SS officer. During World War II, he led the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, which was responsible for pogroms against Jews in Poland. He also led the Waffen-SS in General Government from 1940 to 1941 and in the Netherlands from 1942 to 1945, when he took command of an army corps in Pomerania during the fighting against the Soviet Red Army. On 16 May 1945, he was captured by the British Army in Schleswig, and he was released from internment in 1948. He joined a revisionist group which sought to clear the Waffen-SS of accusations that it had taken part in war crimes, but he left after disputes with Kurt Meyer. He died in 1988.